Walvin - Slavery in Small Things

This edition first published 2017
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Cover image: Arne Thaysen/Gettyimages

The idea for this book germinated at two places in the USA. When I was researching the history of one particular painting (J.M.W. Turner's The Slave Ship) I encountered the astonishing riches housed in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. At much the same time, I was working in the collections of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia. The books, manuscripts, furnishings, tableware, and portraits housed in the Rockefeller Library and various locations around Williamsburg (and in storage) provide a lavish version of life in colonial America. The longer I worked in Williamsburg, however, on what became annual visits, the clearer it became that there was a back-story a context to many of the artifacts on display, but one which often goes unnoticed. So many of the material objects derived directly or indirectly from the efforts of African slaves, or provided an entre into the story of the lives of enslaved Africans in the Americas. Yet who thinks of slaves when looking at a beautiful 18th-century sugar bowl, or a piece of mahogany furniture?

This simple question applies not only to North America but is equally relevant (and perhaps even more so) in Britain itself. Galleries, museum, private collections, stately homes, and palaces all these and more boast of and display items which belong not merely to the story of wealth, style, and fashionable taste, but to the astonishing history of African slavery in the Atlantic world. The link between voguish taste and brutal slavery generally goes unnoticed. This simple point set me off in search of the background. What is the connection between African slavery in the Americas and the development of key features of Western taste and style from the 17th century onward? This book tries to offer an answer.

Like all my earlier books, what follows has been made possible by the help, co-operation and friendship of people on both sides of the Atlantic. At the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation James Horn proved a stout friend and supporter over many years. He and his colleagues, notably Inge Flester and more recently Ted Maris Wolfe, but above all the staff in the Rockefeller Library, have always made my visits fruitful and enjoyable.

I made an initial effort to explain my ideas at a Conference on Visualizing Slavery and British Culture in the 18th century at Yale University in November 2014. There, David Blight and his colleagues at the Gilder Lehrman Center provided their traditional warm welcome, and an invigorating forum for what I said. Richard Rabinowitz again showed that his friendship does not obstruct his critical and imaginative approach to the study of history. Over many years, my work in the USA has been made possible and worthwhile by the kindness of a number of friends: Tolly and Ann Taylor, and Marlene and Bill Davis in Williamsburg, Bill and Elizabeth Bernhardt in New York City, and Fred Croton and Selma Holo in Los Angeles. Caryl Phillips, always willing to listen and to lend invaluable support, seems untroubled by my tendency to talk as much about football as history. Through thick and thin, all these friends have listened more patiently than I have a right to expect. Above all others, and as on so many other occasions, Jenny Walvin has lived at close quarters with my current interests, and makes everything possible.

In Hull, John Oldfield and David Richardson, and Richard Huzzey in Liverpool have proved great supporters. Most important of all, Peter Coveney at Wiley accepted the initial proposal for this book, and was hugely influential in seeing it through, though he had moved on before it appeared. The anonymous reviewers he commissioned to read the draft manuscript provided invaluable help in making what follows an infinitely better book than the one they read initially. This book was also improved by the efforts of Fiona Screen, an exemplary copy editor.

For years, Katie Campbell and Michael Davenport have provided a welcoming home-from-home in London. This time, Michael did not live to see the book materialize. I would have given a copy to him, but now, alas, I can only dedicate it fondly to his memory, echoing his favorite phrase, as we topped up his whisky glass, Un tout, tout petit peu.

James Walvin
March 2016

Our understanding of slavery has been totally transformed in the past fifty years. Between 1960 and 1964 I studied history as a British undergraduate. Or rather I studied British political history. I still have all my undergraduate notes and essays, and looking through them, and thinking about what I was taught (and on the whole taught well), I am now struck by how curiously insular how British (English even) were the historical issues on offer. What has become my major historical preoccupation slavery was not even mentioned. In lectures, tutorials, seminars, and essays, I can recall no mention whatsoever about slavery not one. The book of documents used for a Special Subject on the American Revolution mentions slavery on a mere 19 of the 368 pages, and even then largely in passing. It was of course a very long time ago, and historical interests, trends fads even have changed substantially: some have simply come and mercifully gone. In large measure the curriculum we studied was a reflection of how our teachers perceived and presented the subject, and what they thought suitable for undergraduate study. At the time slavery was only one of many topics which effectively did not exist in British undergraduate studies but which, today, are in great demand. The absence of slavery, in common with other areas of history, was partly a reflection of prevailing knowledge (or lack of it) and the consequent paucity of appropriate literature. There were no obvious books or studies of British slavery that would have provided students with the necessary materials. Equally, the teaching staff were interested in other historical problems for their own research careers. Social history, for example had only begun to make its first transformative impact in Britain. It was hardly surprising, then, that slavery did not even register as a noise off-stage.